Coming Out
You Were Only Waiting For This Moment To Arise

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
-- "Blackbird" by the Beatles

Today is October 11, 2005. It is National Coming Out Day.

I think I perceive “Coming Out” a little differently than many – perhaps most – do. It’s one of those terms we seem to throw around thinking it means the same thing to each of us, when in reality I doubt many of us stop to really consider it.

Generally, in the GLBT community we user the term “Coming Out” to represent the point where a person publicly acknowledges a hidden part of their authentic self to the world - symbolically “coming out” of the closet. And, although there are certainly aspects that are common in many of our experiences, I strongly believe that it's important to emphasize that coming out is unique and personal to each of us.

I’m going to spend some time in this essay considering “Coming Out”. My goal here, as it is throughout most of my writing, isn’t to provide specific answers. I don’t think something as deeply personal as this lends itself to something as simplistic as a “magic pill”. Instead, this essay is designed to share my own personal perspective on this topic, to help others consider things in perhaps new and different ways, and to make people think about things they may not have considered before.

One thing this essay is NOT designed to do is to to convince people to come out who are not ready, or who do not want to.  I'm not trying to be the transsexual Pied Piper calling all our people to come out.  As I said at the outset, coming out is a very personal thing.  I truly don't believe it's for everyone.  I had one friend who struggled with her gender issues in the background, and once in a while she'd consider coming out.  In all the years of our very personal conversations I never saw any indication that she had any ability to manage her own life.  She just went with whatever flow happened to be flowing.  And, I told her that before she seriously considered coming out I suggested she should develop some "life" skills that I felt were important in this kind of an undertaking. 

As with the Matrix, some people - many people - are not ready to be unplugged.  I know there are those who would disagree with this, but to Come Out is to grab a hold of your life by the cajonas in a very public, vulnerable way.  I envision coming out in the same way I envision a fruit ripening, a flower blossoming, or a caterpillar transforming itself into a butterfly - it'll get there when it's ready.  The difference, I think, is that some of us are ready but we're afraid to take that leap.  This essay isn't meant to coax you into jumping.  It's meant to help you make up your own mind on what's real and what's not.  It's meant to help you find these key ingredients inside yourself.  It's meant to show you that YOU control this, and if you do or if you don't you have nobody to blame or to congratulate (depending on your perspective) but yourself. 

There are any number of things to come out about.  I strongly believe that coming out as gay or lesbian is different in many profound ways from coming out as transgendered.  I think some consideration needs to be given to those who come out publicly as supportive straight allies.  And, although I could use this space to talk about the ways these things are different I'd rather leave that for some other time.  This essay is about coming out in a more generic sense.  It's about getting to know yourself, about finding reasons to share something personal about yourself, and about being comfortable doing it.

That being said, I’ve identified 12 specific points that I’d like to highlight as things to discuss about coming out. These aren’t rules, or even guidelines. They’re points I think would have helped me in my own coming out experience. You may agree with them, and maybe you won’t. Either way, they may help you consider Coming Out in ways you haven’t done before.

Donna’s 12 Points about Coming Out

1.   Coming out is not a thing. It’s a process.

I suppose I should say at the outset that I don’t perceive coming out as a thing. It is a process. I envision it as though it were a ball being held under water – gradually inflating, slowly moving upwards towards the surface. I envision it as a plant starting as a seedling, growing to the point where the bud is ready to blossom into a flower.  I envision it as a caterpillar making a cocoon around itself, going into the darkness, only to eventually emerge as a butterfly.  The point of actually sharing your deeply personal information with the world – where the ball finally breaks the surface - is certainly a key milestone in the process, but I think the key ingredient that sometimes gets lost in discussions about coming out is time. It takes a long time. For many of us, it takes forever.

How do we get to that point? Even more to the point, why do some people get there but others don’t? Do they have qualities that others don’t? Do they have more courage, or strength? Do they want it more? Or, perhaps they don’t have as much to lose? I don’t think any of these is necessarily true. I’m sure any of us can rationalize many reasons for not being able to come out. For some, it's probably just not the right thing to do.

Coming Out doesn’t usually just happen all by itself. It’s not something that is done arbitrarily, or by happenstance. It’s rare that we wake up one day and decide, “Today’s the day! I think I’ll come out today!” Fundamentally, it’s not usually a rational process (although we often like to approach it as though it were) so much as an emotional or a spiritual one. Frankly, I think that’s one of the hardest things to realize.

2.   Coming Out is not so much a rational decision as spiritual one.

This wrestling match between logic and the unexplainable urges that compel us is ground zero for many of us. It’s a desperate struggle for control where we allow ourselves to torture and confuse ourselves for years on end. If we cannot reconcile this struggle – if we cannot make peace between these two competing forces, we will be stuck. If you can step back, though, I’m confident that the thing you’ll ultimately realize for yourself is that the answers you are looking for are probably not found simply in your rational mind.

My ex-wife used to complain that "Smart people think too much."  Sometimes, I think she's right.  We look for ways to explain.  We look for ways to rationalize.  We look for proof.  We look to compare perceived cost and benefit and to be able to come up with the right answer.  If this is what you're looking for, chances are that you'll be looking forever as the trigger points here aren't necessarily grounded in fact so much as in feeling. 

I'll tell you this straight away - if I could have held off coming out any longer I would have.  I didn't really want to do it.  I was terrified.  But you know what?  When you've tried all your available choices and only one remains the path becomes pretty clear.  Certainly, there were risks but I think the thing that helped to make me feel comfortable with all the "crap" that coming out unleashed in my life was the underlying comfort I felt about me.

Know this - there is no one “right” answer here. The goal cannot be to choose the “right” thing as there really IS no “right” thing. The goal must be to choose the thing that you feel will provide your best opportunity to be happy. Will you be happy? Who’s to say? Sadly, I think there are people who won’t be happy no matter what direction they choose. Their problem isn’t that they did the wrong thing – it’s that there was no right thing. I think far too many of us buy into the binary of “right” and “wrong” to the point that we let it cloud the obvious. But there is no way of telling, so in the end the answer lies in your heart.

3.   Although Coming Out may be a choice, the underlying issues are not.

This leads us to a discussion where far too many of us falter. It is the discussion of whether any of this is a choice. I could talk about it for quite a while so for the sake of focus I’ll try to keep this short. Every moment of every day we’re all faced with choices. Often, we don’t even realize we’re making choices. Let’s say you’re driving down the road. Each and every second you could yank the steering wheel and veer off the road, or into oncoming traffic. Do you ever consider doing that? Of course not. Does that mean you’re choosing to stay on the road? No. It means that the right course is so obvious that all the other choices available at any point in time aren’t even really choices.

To me, being transgendered isn’t so much about being a man or a woman so much as it is about being myself. At it’s core, the path to transition for me was one to happiness and fulfillment. We all deserve that. Everyone. The fact that this particular path leads through territory that others cannot understand, where others may not want us to follow, isn’t about choice. It’s about guilt. If a child born with a physical birth defect works to correct the impairment in hopes of leading a more fulfilling life it’s seen as something positive. Freed from the prejudice and sensationalism that surrounds it, our journey is no different.

Whether you choose to come out or not – you know the truth. My friend, Jamison Green, did a wonderful job of talking about "Secrecy" vs "Privacy" in his 2005 Southern Comfort Conference keynote and I think that's a critically important distinction.  There's a huge difference between choosing to hide and choosing to keep personal things private.  We each need to come to terms with that.  We need to really be honest with ourselves - and to not confuse short term bravado for long-term courage while at the same time to not confuse short-term terror for an overall inability to overcome it.

To be perfectly honest, is I had been able to keep to keep the life I had before by expressing Donna secretly as I had always been able to do, I wouldn't be here writing this.  I would have kept that old life together for as long as I could and the only place anyone would have ever known about Donna were the few supportive souls who helped her to express herself.  I would never have come out, but to be perfectly honest my life would have been the worse for it.  I've learned so much about myself and about people and about real freedom as a result of all this that I never would have come to realize.

For me, coming out wasn't so much about declaring my transgender-ness so much as declaring my inability to keep difficult issues in any longer.  It was my declaration that enough was enough - that I just couldn't continue going through the motions anymore with all the best intentions for all the wrong reasons.  It was my way of taking hold of my life and of making decisions about me based on experience - not based on fears, or fantasies, or hopes.  I could not make those decisions without being out, so my out-ness was a direct result of my need to make decisions.  One allowed me to do the other.  And, that was a healthy way for me to rationalize it.

4.   Before You Can Come Out to Others, You Need to Come Out To Yourself.

Each of us needs to come to terms with our authentic self before we can hope to really come out. Know this: Before you can come out to others you’ll need to come out to yourself. You need to get to a point where you view yourself as a whole, healthy, person. You need to reach a point where you’re ready to face a world who may not be as thrilled with your revelation as you are. Your shame needs to shrink away to a point where you can hold your head high. Some people never get to this point.

In fact many of us can find countless reasons NOT to come out and we look for arguments to counter them. In the end, though, the tides of doubt and fear that keep our secret safe may never recede to the point where we’re ready to take that leap of faith.

That’s what it is, you know. A leap of faith. It’s acting upon things that we’re taught from our youngest days – that truth, honesty, and integrity really are important things in our lives. That good things happen to good people. That if you work hard good things will happen to you. I’m not saying that to believe those things is to be naïve so much as I’m saying that the key component here is faith. It’s the faith that life can and will be better and more fulfilling once we’ve let our secret out. Whether that proves to be true or not is a whole other story. As we see more and more trans people coming out it might be easy to believe that there are more of us than before. The reality is that more and more people have faith that their life can and will be better by coming out whereas in years past they would have simply suffered through life in silence.

5.   How Do I Know I’m Ready?

I suppose the first question to ask yourself is: What it is that you’re hiding? That’s the heart of the issue – this gnawing feeling that hiding something fundamental about yourself for any number of reasons that makes you feel inauthentic, living a lie, trapped. Realistically, though, sharing this with others only really happens once we’ve come to some level of comfort about it within ourselves.

This leads to the second question: Why are you hiding it? What’s keeping you from sharing this about yourself? If you’ve been grappling with gender issues or sexuality issues I’ll bet the answer can be compressed to a single word. Fear. No, actually Terror might be more appropriate. The thought that anyone would know this about us terrifies us for any number of reasons.

But, if we think about that, we’ll find that the major obstacle keeping us “in” ourselves. We’re the obstacle. The fear we feel is self-induced. The excuses we use to convince ourselves that we’re not ready are of our own creation. All of the various terrible things we envision exist only in our own heads. In reality, those things may or may not come to pass but the mere possibility that we could become vulnerable is enough to allow us to be able to justify all of this.

That one word – vulnerable – is a key word. The be out is to be vulnerable. The more unpopular the thing you’re being “out” about, the more vulnerable you become. For those of us who have spent our lives keeping ourselves from being vulnerable, this can be a difficult obstacle.

There’s a huge difference between coming out, and being forced out. The former implies that we’ve prepared ourselves to a point where we feel ready to be out. The latter means that something happened and forced you to birth yourself before you were ready. The two are not the same. 

Some us spend quite a bit of time planning for the most "convenient" time to come out.  We'll wait until the kids are out of high school.  Or, we'll wait until we retire.  I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with this except to say that some of us don't have that luxury.  For many people, there is no convenient time to come out.  If we wait for a convenient time it will never happen.  We may as well realize that up front so we're not constantly stringing ourselves along - waiting for that perfect time that we know deep inside will never happen.

You'll be ready when you're ready - whenever that is.  Just as there's no one right answer, there's no one time.  No one window of opportunity.  That window of opportunity is always there.  And, depending on the ebb and flow of your life you'll come close to it from time to time to the point where you may actually take it.  What triggers that?  Who's to say.  For me I had already started on the path but the real kick-in-the-pants came when my dad died.  Facing mortality and the ultimate reason we're all here can be a very profound experience. 

Many of us experience similar "a-ha" moments.  Sometimes, we're as low as we can go.  Sometimes, we're on the edge of life and death, and to choose life is to come out.  Sometimes we hurt so badly we just can't stand it anymore.  Trust me, it's not always an easy thing to realize you're ready. 

6.   The Process of Self-Acceptance happens in Steps.

I perceive the coming out process in much the same way as I consider grief. In fact, for many of us, it IS grief. Those same steps involved in the grief process – Denial, Anger, Bargaining, and Acceptance – are the same steps of coming out. As with grief, some people get stuck. Some people get angry and stay angry. Some people spend a lifetime of denial. But in the end, neither response changes the fact that it is what it is. It takes a long time for many of us to realize that. The only real question is, “What do you plan to do about it?”

I remember looking everywhere for a "sign", for something to tell me what to do.  I turned to the church for a little while but the sign wasn't there.  I turned inwards, hoping I'd find something to show me the right path.  I'd sit for hours contemplating the possibilities, but I'd end up more frustrated than when I started at not being able to move - forwards, backwards, anything would have been ok.  In the end, though, the beauty is that you already know the answer.  Once you strip away what others expect of you, once you strip away your fears, once you look at it free from prejudice as though you were telling someone your birthday, or your social security number - you'll know what to do.  It's there the whole time - in you - just waiting for you to discover it. Once you stop fighting it, a sense of calm and peace is there. 

I’d like to point out that whether or not you come to terms with it, or come out with something doesn’t mean it’s not there. That would be like saying that if you’ve got cancer and you choose not to treat it that you don’t actually have a tumor. The tumor is there whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.

You'll often find that you come out in baby steps.  You'll tell people who you feel are completely "safe" - your therapist, a priest, a doctor - someone who won't expose your secret.  After coming out to my therapist and my doctor I didn't come out to a single other person for almost two years.  It took me that long to feel comfortable to take that next step - I call it the Public step because that's when you come out to people who are outside your comfort zone. But, once I started to become public it all happened faster and faster.  I found myself telling people I thought would be supportive (sometimes they were, sometimes they weren't) first as I think we're more affected than we like to admit by our bad coming-out experiences.

These steps are not always linear.  Often we take one step forward and two steps back.  In reality, we can come out and then choose to go back in again.  That's always an option.  The key to know, though, is that once you do come out in a big way your life as you knew it is most probably gone forever.  Once people realize this about you, the way they think about you changes.  The way they act towards you changes.  You can't get that back.  So, although you can always choose to go back just know that the life you're going is different than the one you left the moment you came out.

Once I told my son about myself our relationship was changed forever.  That was a hard pill to swallow, as I think one of the things I really enjoyed about being Dave was the father-son relationship that we had.  Certainly, I could have chosen to de-transition for whatever reason but the fact that he knew that about me, the fact that this was now public knowledge, changes things. 

7.   Your own personal Coming Out will mature over time.

I envision coming out the same way I envision getting into a cold pool. First you put your foot in. Once your foot gets used to the water you put your other foot in. Then, you go down a step and the water is up to your knees. Once you’ve gotten acclimated, at some point you’ll just dive in. That’s how coming out works.

In my experience, it’s rare that someone come out to everyone at once. We need to develop a comfort factor. Generally, the first people we’ll come out to are safe. One of the first people I came out to was my psychologist, and I didn’t come out to another person for well over a year. It took me that long to get comfortable. Then, the people I came out to were people I felt comfortable would handle my disclosure with respect.

The first person I told in my family was my sister – actually, she sort of found out by accident but I helped it along because I knew that she’d probably accept it the best and she would help me with the other family members.

At first, I was so uncomfortable with it all that I couldn’t even use the word “transsexual”. I wrote it all on a piece of paper and gave it to people to read as my way of coming out to them. Gradually, as I did it a few times, I got more comfortable about it and it got easier. That’s not to say it ever got easy – it’s just that it got so it wasn’t impossible anymore.

8.   Make sure you have support.

What makes us feel comfortable enough to share information about ourselves that makes us feel vulnerable? As those who visit my website regularly will know, I often look to the things I learned in Psych 101 for answers. Specifically, I look to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs which says that our most primitive needs need to be addressed before we can move on to more complex ones.

One of our most basic needs is security.  That may sound odd when talking about something so insecure as outing yourself can be.  The key to realize is that you need support.  You need people in your life that you can count on.  You need to have the infrastructure in place to catch you when you call, to help you up when you're down, to provide guidance at a time when you may not be able to do it yourself.

Initially, I found people to help me consider things in a healthy, supportive way.  They gave me the piece of mind to gradually come out a little more, and a little more.  For some, it's like opening Pandora's Box.  For others, getting too close to the edge is a terrifying experience.  Either way, make sure you have support.  Without support, no matter what the situation, life can look very dark. 

9.   Coming Out isn’t something that someone does once in their lives. For many of us, it happens for a Lifetime.

At the beginning, I came out because I had to.  I had to come out because I was planning to transition and people needed to know.  It seemed to be a pretty simple equation, and I made sure to come out only to the people who needed to know.  Of course, I'm sure they all ran home and told family members, friends, and whoever about it.  News like this is too juicy to keep in. (That's one thing to know:  If you come out to someone and ask them to keep it a secret they probably won't.  They can't.  It's just the way it is.)

As your life goes on you'll find that you'll need to come out for any number of reasons.  For example, whenever I go to a hair salon I tell them.  I want them to know so they can help me learn.  I tell people at work on a need-to-know basis, although I certainly don't hide it (I've got an HRC pin on my ID card and will explain to anyone who asks). 

My coming out to friends is usually reserved for those I feel a certain level of intimacy with.  It represents the boundary where we stop being casual friends and we start to share more intimate things about ourselves. 

Sometimes, it's hard.  I had one friend who was talking with several people on eHarmony or one of those dating sites and she really enjoyed getting to know them online.  Each time they'd press to actually meet her, she'd feel the need to tell them before they met in person, and once she told them she never heard from them again.  It broke her heart.  And, it happened time after time. 

This goes back to the privacy vs. secrecy thing we discussed a little earlier.  Why tell someone?  Why come out to them?  Our needs to do it change over time.  Often, our strategy will change based on past experience.  I have one friend who finds that people seem to accept it better if she explains to them that she was born intersexed - and she went through the process of changing as an adult.  Whatever works....

I think that HOW you come out is almost as important as coming out.  It's like most things: if you're comfortable with it then others have a higher degree of comfort.  If you're distressed about it, if you're struggling with it, then others will probably struggle with it, too.  That's not to say it needs to be something rehearsed, or inauthentic.  That's not it at all.  What I'm saying is that I think as we get more comfortable with it I think we'll notice people reacting better.

The point here is that coming out isn't something you do and then it's over.  You'll probably find a need to do it again and again for any number of reasons in your life. Sometimes, it will go well.  Sometimes, it won't. 

10.   Being out is not necessarily binary. You can often be Out and Not-Out at the same time. 

That was a huge revelation to me. I could be out to some people – in places where I needed to be out – and not to others. It’s rarely an all or nothing deal.

That being said, there’s a difference between coming out and being out. Some people wear their out-ness on their sleeve.  They're queer and they're proud.  They wear rainbow T-shirts and hats and they out themselves as something the minute you see them.

Some of us don't have the choice of coming out.  Once we begin to live in our authentic gender we're out the minute you see us.  Some of us pass to varying degrees, so having to actually articulate the fact that we're different isn't really necessary.  People know.  People can tell.  Sometimes that can actually be a blessing, although most times I don't think we look at it that way.  One thing I suppose I should say about this is that others may often suspect, but they won't actually know for sure until you articulate it. 

But for many of us, that's not what we're looking for.  We want to be able to live our lives in whatever gender feels comfortable.  We want to live ordinary, mundane, "normal" lives without having to explain deeply personal things about ourselves to everybody we meet.  There is an aspect of choice involved.

By late 2003 I had gradually gained some level of visibility in the GLBT community.  That happens when you write books, when you appear in documentaries, when you speak at conferences, when you have a website.  But, at the same time, most of the people in my day to day life didn't know.  We didn't discuss it.  It just wasn't important in the working relationship we had.  I wasn't hiding it, but I wasn't being totally out about it either.  To be honest, that's how I continue to live my life today.  I like to think of myself as more than simply a one-dimensional person so I can't see the need to be "out" to every single person I meet.

Sometimes, you can come out to one or two people and that's it.  You find that these people can help you manage your life to the point where you don't need to come out any further.  You don't need anyone else to know.  You gain some level of comfort at being "out", but at the same time you haven't had to risk the things that are most important to you to any significant degree.  Is there any shame in that?  Of course not.  It's all about being out and being not-out - about your own personal level of out-ness.  It can change over time, but I think it's an important thing to know at the outset. 

11.   First Reactions are not necessarily Lasting Ones.  Give it time.

To come out to someone is to give that person a gift – to entrust them with intimate, personal information about yourself. It needs to be handled with care and respect.

I think many of us are hurt beyond words that our revelation isn't greeted with enthusiasm. The people in our life are often shocked.  They're often scared.  Sometimes, they feel angry, confused, betrayed - you'll find your revelation greeted with any number of initial reactions.  I've learned the hard way that the people in your life who feel most affected by the news tend to react the most extreme ways. 

It takes most of us a lifetime to come to terms with this "thing" about ourselves.  We can't expect the people in our lives to grasp it all right away.  Many won't know what to think and you'll need to help them.  For example, the first thing my mom seemed to worry about was whether or not I was making a mistake, that I was in for a difficult life.  She was worried.  I did my best to help her to understand and over time she seemed to come to terms with things. 

As with our own process of grieving as we come to terms with this thing about ourselves, the people in our lives will grieve, as well once they learn about it.  They will go through that same process.  And, as with most things some will be able to come out the other side with a sense of calmness and peace about it.  Others get stuck - they're angry and they stay angry.  They're hurt and they stay hurt.  Sometimes the best thing you can do is to give them the space to work it out.  Time sometimes helps to soothe things.

My son initially accepted the news well.  He really didn't seem to make a big deal out of it.  That changed as my physical appearance began to change.  I could sense that he was gradually becoming uncomfortable.  He was becoming unsure.  Eventually, he decided to cut contact altogether.  That one thing - the loss of contact with my son - was the single most painful part of my entire transition.

After almost a year - we finally reconnected. Our first meetings were little baby steps, but as he came to realize that I was still me and it really didn't affect him all that much he seemed to get more and more comfortable with it.  Eventually, we got to the point where he came to Texas to live with me.  The moral of the story is to let people have the time they need to deal with this.  Let them grieve.  Cut them some slack.  If you can do these things, you may be able to save more of the relationships than you realize.

12.   Once you’ve Come Out, you will never be the same.

You may be incredibly proud at coming out. Or, once the reality of what you’ve done hits you, you may find yourself terrified beyond words. I think the most amazing part of it is the mixture of sheer relief/amazement/excitement and terror of it all. I remember thinking, “People like me just don’t do things like this! Other people come out. Not people like me.” Well, things like this do happen to otherwise regular, ordinary, normal people – each and every day – because they’ve chosen to share something personal about themselves with someone else.

Realize this – once you’ve come out, you will never be the same. The things you’ve said cannot be un-said. The things you will learn about yourself as you struggle with Coming Out will fill you with the fuel to come further out, or to retreat back into darkness. Either way, the experience will change you.

I sometimes think we need to look at things through other people’s eyes to get a better view of what’s happening. People often say that coming out is “courageous”, and we often tend to minimize that. We don’t see it like that – but in reality it is. It takes courage to risk yourself like that. In a world where people are afraid to allow themselves to be vulnerable you’ve done something special. That needs to be appreciated. You need to take some pride from that.

Often times, being out is hard. There are times when each of us will second-guess ourselves. We’ll wonder what form of temporary insanity drove us to out ourselves. We’ll begin to consider the possibility of going back “in” again. Sometimes, we go there.

The thing we seem to forget is the loneliness and the pain of living a lie. We forget the feelings that drove us to come out in the first place, and it’s not long before we realize that they’re still there. That’s not to say we can’t or won’t retrench ourselves – like a groundhog that has seen his shadow and has gone scurrying for the safety of the dark hole.

The greatest single thing I've earned by coming out is freedom.  I've reclaimed my life.  Andre Gide's quote, "I'd rather be hated for what I am than loved for what I'm not" has deep, personal meaning to me.  Certainly, there has been a price.  Nothing this valuable comes for free.  But for those willing to make the sacrifices, for those willing to take the risks, for those willing to look deep inside themselves - there really can be treasure. 

* * * * *